I needed this poem today. Sometimes the body just needs more sweetness. Thank you, Pablo Neruda. You really understand that.
Sweetness,
Always
By
Pablo Neruda
Why
such harsh machinery?
Why,
to write down the happenings
and
people of every day,
must
poems be dressed up in gold,
in
old and grim stone?
I
prefer verses of felt or feather
which
scarcely weigh, soft verses
with
the intimacy of beds
where
people have loved and dreamed.
I
prefer poems stained
by
hands and everydayness.
Verses
of pastry that melt
into
milk and sugar in the mouth,
air
and water to drink,
the
bites and kisses of love.
I
long for eatable sonnets,
poems
of flour and honey.
Vanity
keeps nudging us
to
lift ourselves skyward
or
to make deep and useless
tunnels
underground.
So
we forget the joyous
love-needs
of our bodies.
We
forget about pastries.
We
are not feeding the world.
In
Madras a long time since,
I
saw a sugary pyramid,
a
tower of confectionery—
one
level after another,
and
in the construction, rubies,
and
other blushing delights,
medieval
and yellow.
Someone
soiled his hands
to
cook up so much sweetness.
Brother
poets from here
and
there, from earth and sky,
from
Medellín, from Veracruz,
Abyssinia,
Antofagasta,
do
you know how to make a honeycomb?
Let’s
forget about all that stone.
Let
your poetry fill up
the
equinoctial pastry shop
our
mouths long to devour—
the
mouths of all the children
and
the poor adults also.
Don’t
go on without seeing,
relishing,
understanding
so
many hearts of sugar.
Don’t
be afraid of sweetness.
With
us or without us,
sweetness
will go on living
and
is infinitely alive,
and
forever being revived,
for
it’s in the mouth,
whether
singing or eating,
that
sweetness belongs.
